Wrong Tales
by Jade Rowwood
Summary: A tale within a tale. Warning, not for those faint of heart. Concerns a certain sadistic young girl. Coincedentally, the plot is as chaotic as her thoughts are. I'm not good at summaries, sorry. I will make it make more sense though. Spoilers.
1. Tale of Beginning

__

You look around and find yourself in a very dark place, when suddenly, out of the swirling mists steps a colossal _silhouetted shadow against the lighter colored mists. Stepping further into the light you see it's a huge blood red dragon with silver wings and a sleek streamline body. His graceful muzzle, elegant in the dim light, the numerous battle scars criss-cross his wizened face as his fire-green eyes blaze below his semi shattered copper horns. He bows his graceful head to you, a strange gesture to a stranger in his lair, but the sinuous flow of his neck echoes the gesture. Out of the dark steps another figure. You squint as you try to see more clearly. Suddenly the second figure trips and falls to the ground with a loud cry._

"WHO IN THE GOD FORSAKEN HELLS PUT THIS HERE?!?!?!" Stifling a draconic chuckle, the beast before you lights a pile of branches on the floor, and the sudden burst of light blinds you. After recovering, you see clearly the dragon and the newcomer before you, who've settled onto the chamber floor . Before you sits a young woman of sixteen with jade green eyes and chestnut colored hair dangling in lose strands about the shoulders of her plain buckskinned colored robe.

"Sit." she commands quiet authority in the now calm voice that you recognize from the raging one of before. "Welcome to my dear Angel-slayers' lair." she says patting the great red dragon on his enormous blood red shoulder. You obey and sit upon an ancient stone slab roughly hewn to fit a fortress support beam of long past, its ancient glyphs hardly visible now, but still shows its splendor in its size.

"You have come for a tale, yes? By the by, I am called Jade Rowwood of the Long Road, you have already met Angel-slayer, he is my stead fast companion on my faring dream journeys, to places and peoples I could only wish to create, but alas, their gods are others."

"Get to the story already!" Angel-slayer bellows above Jade's head. 

"Fine! I was just trying to impress our visitor! You ruin all my fun!" she sobs fakeley. "I will tell the tale of the warriors two, Jak and Daxter."

In a land afar, but near to the very one they grew up in, Jak and Daxter struggled to survive. The place of twisted metal and imprisonment where Jak had realized his dark potential. Opening his eyes, he was greeted by the walls of a prison and his dear friend Daxter. But I'm going to skip that now and dive to the heart of the matter. Jak's untold confrontation with the lunatic racer called Erol.


	2. Wolf in the Fold

"Can you help me?!" the young woman sobbed bitterly as she grabbed senselessly at a passing stranger. "Please, he's dying! Save him!"

"Look lady, I don't know what your on and I really don't care." the man said dislodging her grip from his shirt.

"SAVE HIM! HE'S DYING!" she clawed at a passing woman, shoving a lucid black and purple crystal shard in the passer bys face. The woman drew away in repulsion, hanging from a shattered edge of the matter was a strange piece of stinking flesh that when touched by the ravenous black flies of decay, sizzled and melted them with a strange body fluid.

"Get away from me!" the woman cried alerting a near by Krimzon Guard with this strange woman's behavior. As the woman withdrew from the estranged ones' presence, the Guard listened to the disturbed ones' strange tale of a great blood red beast in Haven Forest.

"He's dying! Help me save him!" the young woman cried clutching the crystal shard to her chest, her blood flowing freely from her mutilated palm. She was a sight that disconcerted the military man, something not easily done to one of the Krimzon Guard.

"Look lady, your not making sense! I can't help you or this guy, Haven Forest isn't my problem." he spoke curtly, trying not to lose his cool as Torn told him not to.

"NO! NO! No, no, no!" she cried grabbing onto his shoulder, her talon like nails cutting into the metal of his armor. Now the poor fellow was terrified. This bloody-tear streaked woman, who from the flesh in the crystal, missing pieces of flesh on her face and hands, who seemed beyond all pain, just to save this guy she kept going on about, he was impressed .

"Please?" she whispered, her claws cutting into his shoulder plate. With a grinding snap, he could feel those claws ripping through the padding of his suit. Alarm etched itself across his masked face as a warm liquid ran from his shoulder, down his arm, accumulating in a small puddle on the ground. Looking down, he saw himself, a crimson warrior reflected in a crimson pool. With a grunt, he ripped his shoulder from her grasp, snapping off her nails in the process leaving them embedded in his shoulder.

"What are you?" he asked bewildered with the sudden pain.

"Please?" she whispered taking a step forward, arms outstretched, eyes set squarely on him. "Please." The guard baulked and stepped back raising his shock stick.

"Please?" His cruel training flooded back with his fear and pain as this unstoppable woman came forward step by slow step. Blue electricity arced through the air leaving the estranged woman on the ground. The unfortunate Guard left her there in the bazaar, cradling his wounded arm.

"Hey!" a voice called in the darkness. "Hey!"

"Maybe she's dead Jak." a second irritating spoke and she vaguely wondered if someone was rubbing a steel bristle brush over her ears.

"I thought Torn told the Guards not to ruff people up like this any more." the first voice spoke.

"Maybe one's a sadist!" the irritating voice spoke. She felt comforted at the sound of the first voice. He could help! She felt a hand gently lift her right hand, turning it over to look at the bloody stubs of her claws. Striking like a viper, her hand lashed out and snagged the collar of the man's shirt before he knew what had happened. Drawing him nearer to her, her head lolled up and her eyes snapped open.

"Help me!" she hissed through clenched teeth near his ear.

"Jak, what have I told you about helping people." the irritating voice wavered with concern. Her eyes flicked to the source of the irritating voice. It was a small orange rodent perched on the man's shoulder. 

"Hold on Dax. She's messed up pretty bad, we have to help." Jak spoke softly. "Who did this to you?" Shaking her head vigorously, she held out the crystal.

"No, no, not me! He's dying! The Forest, the forest, he's there. We have to go, NOW!" she snarled leaping to her feet. 

"What is that?" Jak asked prying the crystal from her hand. "Dark Eco. Where'd you get this?"

"It came from him, we have to go, have to help! Medic, he needs a medic!" she spoke hysterically. 

"Alright, calm down, I'll call Samos, he could probably help." Jak said pulling out his communicator. 


	3. Dying Dreams

In the darkness, she saw him as she remembered him, caring and kind. His bright brown eyes reflecting nothing of what he was now. His training and years of cruelty far from those gentle eyes. 

She could see him, his unmarred face smiling at her through the darkness. The image she held dear of him. Without warning, that image became fierce, cold, uncaring. A foolish looking warrior who left her for that _mechanic_.

She snorted in her sleep, her face screwing up into a sinister scowl. Much like his. Her bandaged hands fidgeted unconsciously at the long tattered sleeves of her blood stained tan blouse. Jak watched her silently as he piloted the fire green two-seater hover vehicle to the Haven Forest gate. Still clutching the Dark Eco crystal to her shirt, the liquid began to eat through her bandages making them smolder. He vaguely wondered if it was enough for her wounds, but then again, some never heal.

"I wish she'd stop doing that!" Daxter spoke semi-softly in Jak's ear. "That creeps me out."

"Let her dream Dax, it might be all she has left." Jak replied dodging below a slow moving Zoomer. He glanced back at her. Her face set into a soundless scream, eyes half open, they whirled wildly this way and that. In the warm air, he shivered, he had to agree with Daxter. There was something very wrong with this woman.

In the darkness, she again was staring down the barrel of the man's firearm. She felt cold.

"I don't need you any more. Your days have been numbered, and today, your number's drawn!" he cried. She felt the heated plasma like substance enter her skull. Pain and horror pulled her to the ground, even as she watched, he turned on his heel and stalked back to the waiting Guards. Turning to catch a last glance at the dying woman, he spat in her eye.

"Take this corpse into the forest to bring the metal heads closer to the city for our attack." he spoke to two of the crimson men. Time slowed and blurred as she was thrown into the back of a Transport that had so conveniently dropped into the Water Slums outside her house.

The warm winds blew her fiery red hair from her devilish brown eyes. Much like his. Jak had seen her before, or someone related to her, but he couldn't recall. A perfectly circular scar set on her brow between her eyes.

"What's that?!" Daxter cried staring at her scar. "Looks like she had a horn." Jak's eyes found the scar easily.

"Or was shot." Jak said. "But she should be dead if she was shot."

"Maybe she's a zombie! AAAAGH!! What have I told you about helping people?!" Daxter cried.

"My…my brother. Don't die. I'm coming f for you." her speech slurred by Gods-know-what.

The Blood Red One heard her and knew that she would be returning soon for the bloody wreck of the once proud warrior now laying beneath the tree. He would wait and she would come.


	4. Nhana's Tale

"Hey! Wake up! We're here." Jak called through the darkness. Before she could stop herself, her right hand wrapped itself around his throat while her left hand brought the knife like shard to the exposed space below his chin.

"I have a name!" she snarled regaining her sense of malevolence, a lot like his. "I am called Na…na, Nhana. Na…Nhana. Don't for, forget that, E Eco Freak!"

"It's alright Nhana. Dax and I are trying to help you." Jak spoke using what air he could force down his throat past her hand. "Let go." Her left dropped away from his throat while her right hand loosened slightly but still held.

"Yyou kkilled my brobrother. Now now he's ddying again be because of yyou." she stuttered, her hand quivering around his throat. Her head sank down, eyes on the ground, sadness flowing from her heart and out her eyes as tears. "Erol."

"Your brother is Erol!" Daxter cried. Jak wrenched her hand from his throat. 

"EROL!!" he cried. His eyes filled with rage, the Dark Eco burning inside him. The prison. The stadium. Keira. His hate for the dead racer burned brighter than the green sun. "Erol is dead!"

"Not by the likes of you! Our Blood Bond is stronger than the Eco in you! If one of us lives, the other lives." her stutter vanished as quickly as her rage appeared. "The Oracle blessed us when we were young just as it taught you how to control your Darkness. It spoke our future. It said:

'Born of Balance

Light and Darkness.

Twins of rage and pain

Powers to one die of Eco Flame,

A Beast of a man for retribution.

The second born demand restitution,

Death at the hands of the older

Younger, a Seer of future tense,

Scarred and searching for recompense.

Only through death bound,

Can powers of Light and Darkness found.

To shed away mortal pain,

Twins who will die in vain.

Light to one of beauty of mind,

Dark to one of beauty physically retain.

One lives,

One will die.

Neither can live the same.

Death together will be their bane.

Immortality upon this plane' "

She sat in silence, watching him for a reaction. His only reaction was that of calm.


	5. Red Beast

Sudden silence fills the darkening chamber as the fire all but dies out. A flash of movement catches your eye. Taking an enormous log in his fanged jaws and hoisting it high into the air, Angel-slayer snaps it in half with ease. You flinch when the two sections land in the fire pit sending sparks in all directions. Nostrils flaring, and jaws hanging open his flames shoot down onto the logs burning the darkness with intense dragon light. Shaking his head like a dog, he looks down at Jade. A large stream of drool running down Angel-slayer's shoulder from her lips make him roll his eyes.  
  
"You must excuse My Lady. She has been staying up for the past few nights watching Inu Yasha. It's kinda sad that she can create creatures like me, but can't stay awake to finish a story. Here" he speaks, his rock hard voice that soothes you to know that you are under his protection in his lair. Lifting a wine skin carefully in his teeth, he hands it to you. "This will keep you awake. To bad it doesn't work for My Lady. Let me arouse her." You sip the strong drink, it burns slightly and is blood red. The flavor is like the scent of lilacs liquefied, but with the slight irony flavor of fresh blood. You immediately feel energized as the strange drink floods your veins. Jade yawns and stares into the fire.  
  
"What I miss?" she speaks in a slight stupor.  
  
"You left off with the woman talking in her sleep." You remind. She nods and resumes the tale.  
  
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
  
"Erol." Jak growled looking to the gate of Haven Forest. "I will watch you die."  
  
"Wer weren't you lislistening to me? Ne neither of us can die bby other's hands." Nhana stuttered again regaining her cool.   
  
"Wha what shshould we ddo Jak?" Daxter spoke mimicking her stutter and making her boil with rage. Her hand grasping the shard lashed out. Horror froze itself on his face as he looked down at his partially exposed rib cage. "Jak." he whispered falling from his shoulder unconscious.  
  
"DAX!" Jak cried scooping the fallen Ottsel up in his arms. "We were only trying to help! What's your problem?!" She bared her teeth and ran to the gate. Turning at the incline leading to the gate she snarled something incoherent at him.  
  
"To see why my brother feared you!" she hissed. All at once in a loud roar, Jak became the creature known as Dark Jak. A crooked smirk crossed her lips as long red knife like claws grew from her mutilated right hand. Her long pointed ears became covered with two long curved goat like horns that fit with hollowed out under sides. Her flaming red hair became wild like her blazing gold eyes. Her face became that of a saber-toothed red wolf while her body remained relatively human.   
  
"Come!" she snarled through her blood soaked fangs. He charged after her up the incline holding Daxter in one hand. She ran on all fours, like a wolf. Through the gates he chased her. She ignored the Warp Gate, leaping across the gap she landed claws first on the rock wall. She climbed up using only her hands while she held the Dark Eco crystal in her mouth. He stared after her momentarily then started through the Warp Gate. When he reached the other side, she was there waiting for him. She growled savagely past the crystal in her jaws, the fluid from the flesh burning holes in her crimson lips. Uncaring for personal pain, she bounded on with him on her heels. The first gap was nothing compared to her next leap. Jak landed on the strange Precursor Transport while she flew to the threshold of the Forest.   
  
Landing on the copper like metal, she turned and snarled at him. Wasting no more time, she leaped onto the rock wall and ran on all fours like it was nothing more than the ramp to the Forest Gate. Coming to the Forest clearing, she stopped before the waterfall, before the Great Beast and bowed.  
  
"My brother." she spoke softly dropping the crystal on the grass. "My task is complete." The creature clicked its insect like mandibles in what one would guess as a smile. Bearing its saw like teeth, it brought a scaled foreleg onto the shard, crushing it like fine ice. Nhana's face contorted with unknown pain as she howled and flailed on the soft grass. She laid still in a death like trance next to the bloody wreck of the man the Beast was guarding. All at once Dark Jak bounded into the clearing and came face to face with a creature of pure nightmare, Erol's strange new form. 


	6. Light of Failing

The red giant stood on all fours like his sister did. He was the physical embodiment of pain, like the creature who controls all nightmares. Erol's face was of that of a huge constrictor, serpentine all the way down until his neck met his shoulders. Unlike a suffocating snake, his lower jaw spread apart into two separate sections lined with serrated fangs. His flaming brown eyes blazed in the cool clear air like twin novas. Above his fierce eyes sat a trio of sword like horns of Dark Eco that shifted from black to purple in the light. His body was that of a hairless crimson gorilla crossed with a sturdy Tiger like cat with talons on each limb of an eagle. His spinal cord cut off abruptly leaving no trace of any form of tail. His body was scale less with the exception of the three scale plates on his forelegs. Taking a step forward, his four toed foot came crashing down atop Nhana. Dark Jak winced slightly at the sound of snapping bones. Erol's three jaws spread wide as he lunged at the young man. Dark Jak became Dark Giant and grasped Erol's jaw with one hand when he threw Daxter out of the face of danger.  
  
"My sister." she heard a faint voice speaking to her mind. She couldn't breath, she couldn't think, she didn't even know who or what she was. Pain lanced through her mind like blue lightening.  
  
Blue lightening? I remember blue lightening. Darkness. Who am I? She wondered, her thoughts jumbled and tangled in the darkness of her mind. "My sister, wake up."  
  
"Who are you?" she called back into the darkness, mind to mind.  
  
"You must get up. I can't help you anymore. It's your time now to prove that you really can fight on your own" the voice whispered to her mind. It trailed off leaving silence and the sound of her own heart. Wait. She thought. What's that sound?  
  
Listening to the darkness, she heard it again, a faint fluttering sound.   
  
"I remember now!" she screamed to the darkness. "Erol, you bastard! You took part of my heart! You bastard!! You BASTARD!! I'll kill you for this! Did you think that you really could control me by burying part of my heart in Dark Eco? I bow to no man!" she cried. Her atrocities in the bazaar, controlled by him. Her attack on Jak and Daxter. Daxter falling to the ground half dead.  
  
No, no it wasn't me. He forced me to do it. She thought trying to take solace in the knowledge, but still saw his blood shining on her hands in the darkness. NO!  
  
Shimmering trees in the early morning mist. The Air Transport came to a jouncing halt near the Great Tree in Haven Forest.  
  
"This is your stop bitch!" a Guard yelled when he threw her from the back of the transport. The door closed as he laughed with his comrades. She laid on the whispering grass for what seemed like years. She could feel the skin on her forehead knitting itself back together. Her mind was another matter, the minor functions were healing themselves, but memories couldn't be repaired. She thought long and hard and could remember only three things, Erol, their fate, her death. When motor skills were repaired, she staggered to her feet.   
  
"Where am I?" she wondered aloud. "Who the hell am I for that matter?"  
  
Nhana. You are Nhana, don't forget that. A gentle voice spoke on the laughing wind. She turned and stared at the tree, snaking up its ancient bark was a bright river of Green Eco. Another river of Blue Eco danced through the air. Yet another color illuminated the morning sky, Yellow Eco. Finally flowing about her tattered boots like watery fire, Red Eco flowed all about her.   
  
You are Nhana, daughter of the elements. You are now of the Eco of Fire. The voice spoke vanishing with the first three Ecos leaving the red shining brightly on her skin.   
  
Pain snapped her from her reverie. Her chest imploded with such an excruciating force that she wished she were dead.  
  
"Time to fight, my sister." 


	7. Demon's Blood

Dark Jak grappled viciously with the creature, his hands bleeding blood and Eco from Erol's saw like fangs. Neither noticed the two bloody bodies rising from the forest floor on their own accord. Neither noticed when Nhana's skin fell away from her flaming body in great bloody sheets. Erol noticed though when a flaming arrow of Dark Eco flew through his exposed flank. Ripping his hellish head from Jak's grasp, he looked towards his fierce sister. She was the saber-toothed red wolf of before, but more so. She stood with a great long bow made of bone and Dark Eco, as was her body, skinless, muscle and bone bright and wet with blood as her shoulder blades burned an unquenchable fire. Her eyes, dark and shinning like a pair of black peals. From her sides, sprouted hundreds of Dark Eco arrows like quills. Drawing back, she let another dark arrow fly. It buried itself in Erol's forehead, rearing back like a frightened horse, Erol screamed defiantly pulling the arrow from his skin. Not thinking, Jak tackled Erol embedding his claws in Erol's underbelly. Pulling another arrow from her side, she winced at the pain when the 'quill' was removed. It hit its target true. Jak whirled and fell when the arrow shattered the shin of his left leg.  
  
"He's mine!" she roared. Jak nodded gritting his teeth. Nhana turned to the death like form of what Erol once was standing behind her. He was a shell of what he once was, a mindless zombie under the control of the Red Beast. She strode over to the dead man and held a drawn arrow to his temple.  
  
"Glersha vuana naya der miyan! Time to die my brother!" she hissed between her teeth in the language they had created for the codes they used to communicate with one another when he was in the Guard. Erol's fiery brown eyes blazed at her with extreme hatred. Then, she could have sworn she had seen, just for a second, a tiny passing remnant of what he once was wash over those eyes. She looked back at the bloody wreck and dropped her bow to the ground. As if quenched by her tears, her flaming body smothered itself while her skin slowly began to regenerate. She fell to the ground sobbing bitterly, hating herself for her weakness. She couldn't do it, she couldn't kill her brother.   
  
Erol took this chance, grabbing her in his huge claws, he began to squeeze the life from her. She writhed at the pain while he bombarded her mind with images, the regeneration experiments they performed on her in the fortress. Her severed limbs chained to the walls, while new limbs began to painfully regrow to replace the still moving cut ones. Then, their parents, torn to shreds by the attack on Dead Town, they couldn't get away. The day Erol shot her.  
  
"You see my sister," he scoffed in her head. "I was always stronger than you. You were meant to die!" Dazed, her head sank to her still skinless chest rapidly losing consciousness.  
  
Laughter. I hear laughter. Her thoughts came disheveled to the rapidly thinning line of her consciousness.  
  
"The arrow, the arrow my sister." her brother's true self pleaded in her mind. "END IT!"  
  
She aroused herself with his cry, pulling the arrow that she unconsciously still held in her hand, she buried it deep into the demon's temple. Demon Erol howled dropping Nhana. 


	8. Miasma Dreams

He awoke with a start. His sixth dream in this hell hole of a hospital, dreaming of his slow witted sister.  
  
'No, no, she's dead.' he thought to himself remembering her bloody fierceness in the dream. Her vicious eyes alive with the fire she had, before she went. He shuddered running a hand over the mockery of his face. Blown to bits, he mused, only to be put back together in calloused chunks.   
  
"Nhana, was this your room?" he wondered quietly to the silent walls. All the rooms of the hospital were identical, so he couldn't tell where she spent her last moments. That day, he, Erol the mighty racer, couldn't save the final remnant of his family. Wasting away, she cast her dying eyes on him and smiled.  
  
"It's okay, my brother. There was nothing you could do." she spoke softly placing her trembling hand on his shoulder, her skin a light iridescent blue coursing with Dark Eco. He shuddered at the memory, the Dark Warrior Program. Praxis had told him that only specially "qualified" individuals were taken into the program, but Erol never thought that would be his sister. He had fought long and hard to get her out of the Program, until the day she could take no more. He had found her that morning laying deathlike deep beneath the fortress in its drainage cesspool. Stealing a Zoomer, he rushed her to the hospital, where she stayed her final hours.  
  
"I did all I could Nhana. I did all I could." he whispered to the dark room. His mind flicked to the only way he could gain vengeance, by tormenting those next in the program. Jak. How he enjoyed tormenting the young man, the would be hero that couldn't save his Nhana!   
  
HE WAS TO LATE! His mind screamed envying the love and hope everyone blatantly bestowed upon that fool's hero.  
  
"WHY COULDN'T YOU SAVE HER JAK? WHY DIDN'T YOU SAVE HER!?" he growled to the walls hoping they would answer. He hated him for not being Nhana's hero, he hated himself for not fighting to the death for her.  
  
"Why didn't I save her?" Erol sobbed staring down at his bed sheets. "Why couldn't I?" 


	9. Cross of Realities

**One month later.  
**  
Throwing her head back, she tore the air with a malevolent war scream. War zone, what she was born and bred for, the battle field. Eyes of silvery-green, she knew no fear. Blue tinted black hair cut close to her scalp gave her the soldier's edge. Dressed in standard Krimzon Guard armor of red and silver, she was amazingly light on her feet. Helmet less and fearless, she fought with her bare hands, breaking the necks of attacking Metal Heads.  
  
"COME ON!" she snarled to the onslaught. The rest of her platoon had fallen back long ago, but she, the youngest had fought on. Her ears, docked close to her head, allowed her to turn faster than her long eared comrades. Some said she was insane, that one day alone in the barracks she had cut her ears herself. Others said that she was captured by the Metal Heads and tortured, but most believe she loved pain. Grabbing an enemy by its forehead and drawing it back to face the sky, she tore its throat out with her teeth. Blood and gore streamed into her eyes leaving her blinded. Staggering, she tore at her eyes, the dark eco burning her face.  
  
"COME ON YOU FUCKERS! YOU WON'T LIVE FOREVER!" she laughed. Swarming onto her like hornets, the Metal Heads wrapped her in a living prison. Blood burst from the lowest attackers, pulling free, she cut them down one by one with her twin blades. Carved from the bone of her first Metal Head kill, they were sharper than any metal. Their hilts, carved into snarling Metal Head faces, her prized works of art which she gleefully used in any campaign. Three small scorpion Metal Heads struck her with their stingers.  
  
"Is that all you got?" she chuckled grabbing the nearest ripping its tail off. Throwing the two sections to the ground, she smiled watching them writhe. The tattoos on her face, which looked like flames emanating from her eyes, were another of her works of art which she bore with pride. "Your mine!" Leaping onto a stealth Metal Head to her right, she wrenched its head this way and that until it lay limp down its back.  
  
Standing smiling among the dead, she laughed, a sound that disturbed the other Guards.   
  
"Well done Meya. You'll make a fine sergeant." Turning, she saw the one who spoke, Erol. The other Guards warily followed their leader to Meya, who stood glaring at them for their 'cowardice' as she called it.  
  
"Like I needed help." she growled below her breath. Striding over to one of the dying, she crushed its skull beneath her boot. Placing her blades in her hip holsters, which would have been used for small guns, she stared at Erol. "Permission to lead the next attack, sir."  
  
"Denied." Erol spoke relishing the look of distaste on her face. "I need you refreshed for our next campaign. Return to the barracks and rest." The other Guards groaned wishing they could take leave. They were also jealous of this fifteen year old girl.  
  
Letting the water run over her burned face, Meya enjoyed the feeling of it running over her tattooed body. Leaving the showers completely nude, she paid no attention to the few other men and women there who glared at "earless" as they called her.  
  
"Yo, Earless! Nice work on those Metal Heads." a man scoffed at her. Whirling around, she planted a bullet in the shower wall above his head.  
  
"Thank you." she smiled at his confusion. Dropping the firearm back into the locker where she pulled it from, she gathered her tattered black underclothes from her armor.   
  
"Need these tailored." she mused poking her fingers through the three holes on the right ankle of the black fabric. Shrugging, she pulled on her bra, wiggled back into her undies and pulled on the heavy black fabric. Hoisting the red metal armor, she pulled on her boots and stalked off to the barracks.


	10. Wings of Darkness

This chapter is in honor of Krin, Child of Moonlight, Dekka, ilikethisstory, Snowy Fox, Evo-Gur1180, and Yakuza Princess. Thanx, this has given me a reason to go on.  
  
Piled in a jumbled mess in a corner, her armor found its resting place, to be welded and revamped later. Stowing her boots next to the disheveled heap, Meya prepared to sleep in her lonely quarters. Slumping down on her hard military issued cot, she stared off into the distance while her hands absently cut themselves on her twin blades. Cold gunmetal black walls separated her bed from the rest of the barracks, leaving her alone to contemplate her greatest mission, to live. Covering the dark windowless walls like blisters on sunburn were her windows to her soul. Scraps of parchment crowded with pictures of torment and bloodshed, forever captured by her pen and pencil.  
  
"I'm glad I set you in solitary."  
  
"Sir!" she barked rising and saluting Erol standing in her doorway.  
  
"At ease." he spoke looking nonchalantly at her artwork, appreciating that he had caged her. Crouching back on her cot, Meya watched him through cold glassy dead eyes.  
  
"I'm here to brief you on your next mission."  
  
"Sir," she barked still watching him. "Brief me on the mission, sir!"  
  
"Good." he smiled, his mutilated face twisting into a haunting look. "You will be leading this one alone. This is your field soldier, small weapons and hand to hand combat, you are the best for this one."  
  
"Sir, yes sir!" she snarled at him, he hardly noticed her hostility. Still smiling his nasty smile, he went on.  
  
"You will infiltrate the palace and commence Operation Red Wolf, do you understand?"  
  
"Sir, yes sir!" she barked remembering the Intel on the operation.  
  
"Good, good. Head out at 0500. Use one of the access towers and cross the bridge to the palace, Jak did it so could you. Good luck soldier." he concluded, bristling at Jak's name.  
  
"Sir, yes sir!" she snarled standing and saluting.  
  
"At ease. Now, enjoy your leave." he spoke turning in the doorway. "One more thing," Grabbing her by the arm, he drew her close to him. "You fought well today."  
  
Bringing his rough lips to hers, he held her fast in a semi passionate kiss. Closing her eyes, she brought her hand to one of her bone blades. In one quick movement, Erol lay sprawled unconscious at her feet, a large welt protruding from his hair.  
  
"Thank you sir. Next time you touch me, I'll have you Court Marshaled." she growled spitting his saliva from her mouth whipping her lips on the back of her sleeve. Lifting his bulky armored form with ease, she launched him from her steel walled room out into the barracks.  
  
"Whoa! The Commander's got it bad for Earless!" one of the other soldiers laughed with his comrades. Meya smiled as Erol groaned slowly becoming conscious. Grabbing her dented armor, she left the barracks in the fortress' heart to the machine shop on the lower floor.  
  
Filled with the sounds of grinding metal and the smell of sulfur, her mind flooded with ecstasy as the metal shavings on the floor punctured her soft feet. Striding gracefully to a vacant workbench, armed with torch and mallet, she began her work. After a few hours, her standard armor became her own design. Lighter and more feminine looking and covered in places with spikes, it was truly hers. Shaping a sharp piece of heavy sheet metal, she had the design for her helmet. Finally, taking her prized possession from beneath her shirt, she had been saving it for months. Erol's racing mask. Adding it and steel spikes she felt it was nearly done. Covering her new wardrobe in black paint, the only red showing was the eyes of the mask. Putting the helmet on, she saw what he saw, a bloody world of crimson twilight. Letting the spray paint dry, she guarded her work like a jealous mother. Placing the black armor in an empty scrap metal bag, she hauled it carefully back to her quarters.  
  
"Almost time." she thought in the darkness of the room. "Time to be." Concealed in darkness, she was no longer one of the Krimzon Guard, she had become a Assassin of Darkness. 


	11. Blak Wulf Warning

Torn growled in his sleep, next to him, Ashelin was wide awake for some strange reason. A sound or a presence alerted her, almost as if she were being watched. The high ceiling of their royal chambers fell away into the heavens of shadow, leaving the floor illuminated by the dying firelight of the fireplace.   
  
Soft whispering echoes of padded boots, to soft to be heard, echoed through the red halls of the sleeping palace. Once Krimzon Guards, now Midnight Blue, stood sentry outside Torn and Ashelin's room in the small hours of the morning.  
  
Stalking the shadows, a red-eyed warrior clad in black armor hissed softly at the blue guards.  
"Shit!" she thought glaring at the thick steel doors. "Think. Gotta give 'em Hell." Crouched atop a high ceiling beam, Meya ran over the palace schematics embedded in her mind via memorization.  
"Outside." her mind hissed as she glared down the hall to the far window where the hall veered off to the right. Scuttling quietly to an ornate lattice, she shimmied across it to the next beam. Moving from beam to beam, she eventually dropped to the floor safely out of sight. Calculating everything in her head from wind speed to how much energy she still had left from the MRE she ate before starting her mission.  
  
"Fuck!" she growled softly at her ignorance. She was getting hungry, she didn't have enough energy to scale the treacherous walls of the palace. "Time to be."  
  
Ashelin heard the sound of breaking glass, she heard the Guards rush towards the sound, then she heard their screams as they fell to their deaths. Grabbing her trusty pistol, she walked slowly to the closed doors of their room.  
"Here kitty, kitty. Come get it." she thought standing behind the door as it slowly swung open from the outside. Standing in the doorway, like a pillar of darkness, was what she thought was a Krimzon Guard.   
"Ashelin. I have a message for you." came the voice of a banshee, hissing with vulgarity. Cautiously looking through the crack between the door and the wall, Ashelin watched this newcomer with frothing suspicion. Bright red eyes of the mask, almost as if lit from within stared at her through the crack. "A friend sent me."  
"Who are you?" Ashelin asked warily lowering her weapon slightly.  
"I am called Blak Wulf. I have been sent to advise you. Great daughter of Praxis, you are in grave danger! Please, let me help you." Meya snarled softly repeating danger again to solidify her point.  
"Alright Blak Wulf, or whoever you are, you have my attention. What's the message?"  
"Ashelin, who are you talking to?" Torn groaned rolling over to look at her.  
"This is" Turning back to Blak Wulf, she saw that she was gone. "Never mind. I'm not feeling well. I'll be back." Leaving the room and closing the door, she stared down the hall.   
"Blak Wulf. What's going on?" Ashelin called down the deserted hallway. Shaking her head, she went back to Torn.  
  
"Sir, everything went according as planned, sir!" Meya spoke into her communicator.  
"Good, I suppose I could forgive you for your actions earlier in light of this good news. Stay posted. Erol out." he spoke clicking his communicator off. Stowing hers, she watched the suns rise in the east from her 'post' in one of the access towers.  
"Well, least I have a place of my own now." she thought staring down on the city remembering how much she hated heights. 


	12. God of Death

"She was working long into the night, by morning we found her like this." the low ranking Krimzon Guard spoke nervously glancing at the body in the back of the dark room, almost worried that the dead girl would rise up and slaughter him. "Weird, she worked on that painting for the past month. Then, the closer she came to finishing it, the more she became insubordinate. Incomplete missions, attacking fellow Guards, remember she killed that new recruit? He just asked her to stand down, poor guy." The other Guard shook uncontrollably, that man was in his platoon, he watched him die.  
  
"Commander Erol just let these things slide, she was to valuable to him to be executed. But, what is this?" the second guard wondered reaching out to touch the still wet paint. A sudden blast of cold air, almost like breath from the living dead escaped from beneath his fingers making him pull back and tense up. "Let's finish this." he growled lifting one end of the body bag while the other guard hefted the other. Moving with their anorexic armored burden, they left the room and locked the door behind them.  
  
But, in the darkness of this crypt, new life coursed into undead eyes. Meya's final and greatest work. Mere hours before her brush danced over the gunmetal surface, fatigue and days without food or drink making her youthful features pulled and darker than usual. And finally, she stepped back to see her masterpiece. Staring long and hard at the wet paint, she collapsed onto the floor and gazed ravenously at the blood coursing beneath the sallow skin of her scarred arms.  
  
"So little for so much." she whispered smiling to the monstrosity on the wall. With the last amount of her strength, she suited up and became the assassin again. Oh how many she killed in the name of the Warlord Erol. Men, women, and children. Invoking fear to force more to join the Guard. And all she could do was smile. "You are my God now." With her last breath, she drew her bone blades. As quick as a viper, she embedded them deep into her silvery green eyes and screamed a dying scream.  
  
That was how they found her, starved and blinded with her dark mural burned into her mind as her last sight. She lay there beneath words of Precursor mixed with something else, a dark forgotten language, a dark curse. 'Time to end.'   
  
But her God wouldn't let it end. He was a man, he was a monster. Eyes of purest ebony glaring past pale blue skin. The man who made her see, led her to regret, and finally led her to death. The man who lost part of his humanity and help her regain part of hers. Her failed mission led her to rebel. Her failure to assassinate Jak. 


	13. Hunters of the Same

**Long Before**

Long before her final sacrifice to her God, she left Ashelin in the grip of an unfinished warning, but that was before. She sat drinking deep from the liquor bottle before her. Sat on the front step of the Naughty Ottsel watching the civilians go about their meaningless lives. She blended perfectly with those civilians. Dressed like them, acting like them, she was one, like before she joined the Guard.

She could almost hear her father scolding her for drinking the liquor. The way he was before she killed him, before she became Meya Blak Wulf. And she could see him laying in his own blood staring up at her through dead eyes so much like her live ones. Head tipped back, she swallowed the rest of her drink, then threw the bottle at a passer by. She chuckled as it hit him atop his fat bald head making him fall face first on the pavement.

"You know you really shouldn't do that." a harsh voice spoke from behind her. She moved in one fluid motion, all the while cursing herself for not hearing the man's approach. Her blade buried itself in the barrel of a gun that placed itself faster than she could move. Her silver green eyes stared shocked into a solitary emerald one and a synthetic red right eye. She was captivated by the mans' true left eye, the emerald one, and couldn't help sheathing her knife. He spoke again, and all she heard was his name, Sig. Strange, she thought, she heard that name. He was Krew's Metal Head hunter, and the armor of Metal Head skulls he wore proved it.

"Hey! Are you even listening to me?! Why don't you head home little girl." he growled dislodging her gaze from his.

"A thousand apologies." she spoke dropping to one knee, and before he could reply, she vanished as fast as he appeared.

From the rooftop above, she heard him say something that it's not worth working for "the cherries" at that time of night and that he'd rather be eaten again by some monster or something. Sig was trouble, she heard of how he fought his enemies, a man who she could relate to, look up to. More so than the fool she called "Sir". She hoped someday she could test her skills in combat against those of the hunter named Sig. One day, maybe.


	14. The Mother that Never Was

_ Kria, that was her name. How did I forget?_ Meya sat later that night after her encounter with Sig at her post, the top of one of the support towers to the palace. It was the one hanging loftily above South Town. She sat with her back to the drop, uncaring that if she leaned back a little further that she would plunge to her death. _Kria._ She dropped her memory along with her tears.  
"Kria. I've never met you, but you met me once. What would you do if you met me now? Would you turn from me in disgust? Would you take my knives and kill me like I killed Da? Kria." Meya whispered to the cool night wind, her heart aching at the thought of this woman named Kria. It had been a week since Blak Wulf encountered Ashelin, little did Ashelin know, but that would be her only encounter with that assassin. Meya was losing her mind, or gaining one with the understanding of others. Either way, Meya was slowly beginning to fade out of existence.  
She was dying.  
"Kria, Da told me about you, how you died with a knife in your hand and a knife in your back. What a joke. Call the fat fuck Da, the same who rapped and killed you after I was born. He said you fought like an animal, like mother, like daughter." she snorted dark laughter that died on the wind with this last thought. 'Da' wasn't her real father. When he took Kria as his wife, she was already pregnant. Little did her parents knew, but years after the murder, Meya found her father. Her father was a man related to 'Da', his brother, so in a twisted way, her Da was related to her.  
"I'm glad Da joined you in Hell, Kria." she whispered letting the wind dry her few tears. She couldn't bring herself to call Kria mother, yet, the man known as 'Da' forced her to call him that.  
_ Use this, kill with it, it makes you one hell of a fighter._ the role of conscious in her mind was filled by Errol's snide voice. How she hated it when he invaded her space, let alone her mind, but she listened. _Time to be.  
_ She nodded to herself and shouldering her pack, slipped into the elevator. Not to gain the attention of the denizens of the palace, the elevator had its power cut, so the door at the top was wedged open by a bulky rifle she never used. Inside was total darkness, one misstep could send her plummeting to the elevator itself down at the towers' base. One misstep. That thought intrigued her, the thought of ending it all, but then the meddling voice of her commander piped up again and urged her on.  
With her pack secured over both shoulders, she blindly slipped down into the shaft. Using powerful magnetic rungs anchored to the steel shaft and a lot of time, she slipped down the makeshift ladder to tower base. She landed on the roof to the Naughty Ottsel and slipped down the pipes until she reached street level. Then she did what she did best, let her feet take her to the next battle ground. 


	15. fifteen

A grin like a cat's skull pulled itself over Jak's face as he fired endlessly on the charging enemies.  
"Get some! Get some!" Daxter shrieked, almost high on the scent of blood and eco draining from the fallen Metalheads before their bodies went critical and melted away. The Vulcan Fury roared away until its shots were cut short with a haunting snap.  
"Damn. Out of ammo." Jak snarled switching to the Scatter Gun, the only other weapon with ammo. "We'll do this the old fashioned way." And the Metalheads were thrown in all directions beneath Haven's night sky. 

Meya's nostrils flared on the wind as the scent of heated metal and tainted blood enticed her towards the Forest Gate. She ran on through the twisted metal and concrete city, completely oblivious to the looks she elicited as she moved about in the open without the fake ears she normally wore over her docked ones, that one scent buried in the millions which wrapped themselves around her drew her on. She opened her jaws and licked her lips, her filled fangs she used for killing bared to the light of the night street lamps. She snapped eagerly at that scent, she turned a corner and it grew stronger. Two corners, three, four, her running feet suddenly padded on the soft grass of one of Haven's agricultural districts, she surged forward, the scent of blood triggering another burst of adrenalin. Her sense of hearing in no way was impaired by her shortened ears, picked up the rhythmatic bang of a powerful firearm. A howl ripped its way to the night sky. The shots were cut short. She guessed the person was out of ammo, and she charged on howling madly, reveling in the blood stained grass.

"Out again!" Jak cursed planting his fist in the nearest Metalhead's face.  
"Deja Vu! What now Golden Boy?" Daxter said, his ears pricking at a strange sound. "You hear that"  
"Not again!" Jak whirled on three on comers flinging them to the ground.  
"No, seriously, it's closer this time!" Daxter stared towards the source of the sound. This time Jak heard. Loud and clear. It sounded like an escaped animal, or something large and mean.  
"Watch out Jak! It might be these guy's backup!" Daxter yelled. Jak nodded and flung more of the creatures to the ground. The only ones who seemed to not hear where the Metalheads, they would hear too late.

Meya skidded to a halt, panting on the wet crimson grass and stared vacantly at the mass of Metalheads occupying themselves with attacking one lone man in their midst. Her hands seemed to be trained by their masters, the bone knives on her hips, they leapt there without hesitation and she bounded into the silver and blue mass of Metalheads.

Jak turned as a doorway seemed to be cut trough the Metalheads to his left. A pair of vicious silvery green eyes stared at him through a gaping hole in a Metalheads' skull. He was caught off guard and a Metalhead took advantage of this and struck. Steel hard fore claws crashed down atop his head, forcing him into subconscious darkness.

Blood rained down on Meya as she forced her way beneath the snapping jaws and cutting claws. She clicked her tongue, enjoying the pain the attackers put on her, but they couldn't do enough. She struck like a demonic snake, and the beasts between her and Jak fell dead. She waded in and grappled with Jak's body as the Metalheads struck. She could sense he could take no more, if he did, he'd be dead, so she hid him beneath herself as the creatures made her blood join their own. She loved it.  
_ Time to be._ She agreed with the thought.

Daxter watched in horror from under Jak's arm the things the fifteen year old did to the attackers, he would be forever haunted by those images.

* * *

Hi everyone! It's been ages, but neither I nor the story are dead. Expect more coming soon, I don't want to ruin the surprise! 


	16. The Butcher

Jak groaned and his mind burrowed deeper into the shadows of sleep. White hot pain lanced across his mind again and again until his eyelids flew open, surprised by the unseen onslaught.

"Thanks a lot for leaving me with this one!" Daxter scolded slapping Jak again. "While you were safely asleep, Wonder Woman over there killed everything, and I mean EVERYTHING!" Jak was leaning against the wall in the only place where blood wasn't cooling on the grass. His head ached murderously, and his face stung where Daxter slapped him over and over again. His blurry vision fixed on an odd shaped object moving on the grass no less than fifty feet from where he was placed. His vision cleared, and oh, by the Precursors, how he wished it hadn't.

The still twitching body of a fully grown Metalhead lay propped in the lap of a girl cross legged on the reddened grass. Her eyes stared unseeing, the same eyes he noted, that he saw before blacking out, at her hands, yet she seemed uninterested in their activities. The Metalhead's chest cavity was sliced open, the way a sedated Crocadog would be on a Veterinarian's table. The big difference:  
This Metalhead wasn't sedated, it was very much awake. She cut deeper and the creature let out a sickening guttural sound and died, it's body melting down and burning away, taking some of the girl's skin with.

"Pity." she whispered licking halfheartedly at some of the ungodly amount of blood covering over ninety percent of her body. Her tongue rasped over her scalded hands and Jak shuddered at the thought of the uncomfortable feeling, Daxter heaved. She turned and scowled towards Jak and the vomiting ottsel on his chest. "Maybe you'll be different."

"Run Jak!" Daxter cried between mouthfuls. All Jak could do was sit there hypnotized by the eyes which seemed to have green-black flames radiating from their outer corners. Jak staggered to his feet, distantly obliging to Daxter's will to live. She stood there as he blundered back towards the palace, she just watched him go and smiled. He would be different.

_Time to be_. Her meddlesomeconscience forced her on and she bounded after Jak and Daxter full tilt.


	17. She Awoke Too Late

"Meya never knew what was happening behind her back." Jade said quietly.

"Tell it." Angel-slayer rumbled high overhead in the shadows. Jade looked up at him and nodded sadly.

"This is where it all gets worse."

* * *

Even before Meya chased Jak through the city, before she cried for her mother and cursed her father, before she was slowly dying, Erol was dreaming.

* * *

He dreamt of _her _again. His sister.

"Brother." She whispered, her saber-toothed wolf's face grinning insanely. "Time to end, my brother." He cried out in his sleep and tossed back and forth as her dream image buried long Dark Eco arrows into his dream body, he, the monster, was a lot smaller now and less frightening. Now he was scared.

"No!" he yelled, his eyes tightly closed, he could feel the quills tear into him.

"They come." Nhana whispered, her bloody dream self disappearing. Before she vanished, before he awoke, Erol saw what she meant. Standing in a pool of purple-black shadows, something dark and foreign to this world stood, something of which he did not know the name to.

* * *

"I can tell you its' name though." Jade sighed and Angel-slayer urged her on. "Dark Precursor. That's what it was."

* * *

Meya pounded through the city, the wind in her short black hair, her wild eyes staring straight forward (they were finally interested in something, something lethal by the looks of it). She could still smell him and she loved it.

_Time to be. Time to be. Time to be._ Her mind chanted in time to her rapid heartbeat. He was slowing now, caught by a wrong turn in the bazaar, in a one-way alleyway she was in the only way out. He turned and faced her, she could still sense that he was weak; she could smell the cold ottsel vomit on his shirt, the dried blood in his hair and on his skin.

Very different indeed.

She leapt at him, blades drawn, jaws wide open screaming at the top of her lungs, and her eyes were clamped shut. He was too quick for her, Vulcan Fury drawn and completely devoid of ammo, he brought the firearm up butt plate first into her face. She was knocked back, rolling onto her claw torn back, gravel buried into the many different depths of the cuts there. She opened her eyes as she rolled onto her hands and spat three of her filed teeth onto the dirty street, blood dripping from the gaps in her upper jaw.

"Yes. I knew you would be different." She whispered wetly, the blood running down her chin. She charged him again, this time leaping every now and then from side to side in slalom fashion trying to throw him off guard from which direction she'd strike from. She raised one knife in front of her chest and the other in her left hand sliced the air in front of her as Jak dodged out of the way. He couldn't take it anymore, couldn't keep his rage in check. His vision went dark as his eyes clouded over with darkness, and the eco inside seemed to go berserk in his veins as he sprouted horns and claws.

For once in her life since she was a little girl, she felt fear.

_No._ Was all she could think disbelieving. The fear awoke something else unnamable inside her, something horrid; something wicked in its truth. This was her death. She was afraid to die. If she could have thought more, she might have thought 'how could a man near death become a beast like me?' or 'what the fuck am I doing?'. But she couldn't and would never think like that again.

His ebon claws came down and cut her open, she fled carrying her own entrails.

* * *

A month later, she paid homage to her God, her last sacrifice. But before then, the Guards found her two blocks from the fortress, face down in the street, her hands clamped to her stomach keeping her innards where they belong. In the time between when they found her and her death, her wounds would not heal. She would not allow them to. She would pick at the stitches and make them bleed. Her blood was mixed with her paint at the end in her mural on Dark Jak's bloody claws. Fitting. But that's not the point, the point was that she saw Erol's mechanization of the Krimson Guards, and what the Dark Precursors had done to him. Everything and Everyone was going to Hell and fast. 


	18. Pain

"What have you done Meya?" Erol asked in his strange new buzzing voice.

"The mission was a failure sir. I couldn't take him." Meya grumbled staring down at her military issued bed sheets, the blood soaking through them as the metal stitches in her stomach stopped little of her blood from escaping. A tear slid down her cheek which she couldn't hide and he didn't notice. She couldn't look at him for two reasons, one, her failure in her mission. And two, ah well, let's just say that he wasn't very pleasant to look at.

"Come with me." It wasn't an order or a suggestion, but more of a passing thought that he wanted her to see something. He stalked out of her small gunmetal colored room, not waiting for her to follow. She swung her legs over the edge of the bed, her black pants catching on the metal side of the bed. She winced, not from the grating feeling of the gravel that was still embedded in her back, but from the feeling of the wire stitches rubbing against her innards. Her breath stopped in her throat and her silvery green eyes widened in horror as she felt a frayed wire catch on something and tear. She stared down past her bra as the blood flow quickened and stained her pants a darker black.

"Meya!' he yelled for her.

"Coming sir!" she coughed, this pain she was not used to and could not take pleasure in it. The feeling she would grow accustomed to, before the day she died.

* * *

Erol waited impatiently in the barracks near her room.

"Meya!" he yelled for her over his shoulder.

"Coming sir!" he heard her cough out of sight beyond her door. He heard soft faltering footsteps on the concrete floor and turned back to the doorway. She stood holding her pale bloody stitched stomach with one hand and leaned on the doorway with her other. Blood dripped down onto her bare feet. "I can't" she began, but fell to her knees. Her head sank down to her chest and Erol moved to her and bent down to her.

"No?" he asked lifting her head to face so she could look at him with his claw. She stared at him through teary eyes. He stood and dragged her up with him by her arm. She was flung unceremoniously over his shoulder with a yelp of pain from her lips. He turned and ran through the fortress.

Meya was dizzy. Erol moved so fast, everything blurred as he moved. When he stopped, Meya was in shock of what she saw. They were looking from the fortress doorway up at the sky. Up there a great red building floated.

"Look well Meya," Erol buzzed. "That's the Guards' new home." Meya silently wept.


End file.
